Readers, meet Dennis Taylor, an old friend of Tim's and a new friend of mine. Dennis is a storyteller by nature, a punchline carrying limerick enthusiast, and always in possession of a good laugh. I'm honored and pleased he has taken the stage this week. I hope you enjoy this anecdote as much as I have.
Tuesday Afternoon, July 12, 2011
I went outside to have a smoke. I do this as an accommodation to the children and grandchildren when they come to visit, or are at least in the area. I succor myself in coping with this inconvenience by trying to find some nobility in the sacrifice of comfort and air-conditioning while knowing in the shallow pools of my mind that it would be nobler to cease the habit entirely. At any rate, I was sitting in an old, sun-faded plastic lawn chair, in the shade of a maple tree I planted long ago. My old worn but reliable suburban sat patiently in front of me, waiting like and old dog in anticipation of another hunt, its Armor insignia plate proudly bourn beneath its front deck, stirring thoughts of a nobler time. Joshua's Louisiana trailer on my right evoked memories of its own, while newer than some, it’s becoming old in their sight.
Overhead in one of the pines, I heard the guttural call of a bird. I remembered the call but couldn't attribute it to the particular bird it belonged to. I looked up into the tree and could see the red cap on the back of his head and the white speckles on his dark back and wings. He took off before I could see his front or even get a real good look at him. All I know is that he was some kind of woodpecker.
I mused that if I had gotten a better look at him I could have gone to my Peterson's Field guide, Eastern birds, and made a positive identification. I bought the book about the time the boys entered school. We maintained the species checklist in the front for quite a while. Tommy's interest waned after a while, but Josh hung with me for a good while.
Suddenly, without provocation, my mind's eye jump shifted to a morning long ago when I saw my first Bald Eagle in the wild.
I was probably eighteen or nineteen years old and my heart and soul were polished and brand new, that would have been about 1966 or 67. It was late October or early November, just on the edge of being cold but not quite there yet. Harvey had an old v-bottom Alumna craft boat with a 30-horse Evinrude on it that I had put in at the launch on the south side of the Natchez Trace bridge. It was light out but the sun had yet to break, back upstream over the bridge, Kroger Island lying some distance behind it. I had raised the foot of the motor out of the water and was perched in the front, drifting, sculling along with the current and the aid of a short paddle. Trolling motors were not a part of that secluded world.
Pickwick Lake was postcard perfect that morning. Dead calm. Mirrored images of trees, rocks and foliage along the south bank, an almost surreal effect in the transient morning light, enhanced by a low-lying wisp of mist created by the confluence of chilly air and still-warm water. That morning I saw it as a sharply clear mirrored reflection. Today, I see it more as a handsomely rendered painted canvas.
I was easing along the edge of the water with my shotgun across my lap, looking for squirrels or perhaps to surprise an unwary duck. As my eyes scanned higher up the sharp incline of the wooded bank I became transfixed. Sitting in the broken top of an old sycamore, were three eagles.
I was transfixed, not so much as in that frozen pre-adrenal moment of fight or flight, but more in the moment of what athletes call ‘being in the zone,’ when you capture every photon in ultra-slow motion clarity.
There were two adolescents and a mature bird. The two young birds were perched on a protruding white bony finger of a Sycamore limb just below the broken-out top. The adult bird rested directly atop the snaggled stump of the broken main trunk. As if on cue from the manitou of the rising sun, the adult, or momma bird as I saw it, sat bathed in the glow of the sun as it broke the eastern horizon. Her bald head radiated whiter than the hem of the purest angel's linen.
They didn't seem alarmed at all by my intrusion into their majestic realm, nor did they appear annoyed. It was as if either reaction would have been beneath their dignity. It was more as if they had a benign tolerance to my presence.
The old bird lifted off her throne with a few powerful, effortless flaps of her wings, turned toward the rising sun, then fixed herself into a glide just a few feet above the taut surface of the lake. The young ones executed flawless imitation of her departure and were in staggered formation in her slipstream just as she again employed the slow stroking of her wings and began to gain altitude. They soared high over the Trace bridge and were above everything. They seemed to be looking down, even at the sun.
Upon emerging from this reverie my mind took another turn. It struck me that the older I get the more reflective I become. I, like other young men, was not much inclined toward reflection. Perhaps this was due to my lack of history, my bank account of experience sorely deficient. It occurred to me that at that age I was much more reflexive than reflective. I had only the vaguest of plans for my future. I was living in the moment, most actions taken were an automatic reflex to whatever stimulus triggered them.
I suppose that it is all just a part of the great circle. Youth, reflexive in its energy, strength and mental acuity. Latter days, reflective, wondering if today's reflections as you see them are really what bounced off the mirror in the first place.
~ Dennis Taylor was born at ECM Hospital in Florence, Alabama on November 26, 1947. "A dear friend once told me he would have loved to have a single item written by his grandfather. Ergo, I write. I'm not sure if I do it so that they might have a little picture of the young man they never knew, or, if I do it for my own vanity, that there might be a record of my existence. Either way: it is written." ~ August 9, 2011
**illustrations by Amy C Collins, 2011
